Commodore 64 Links and Thoughts

Just finishing off the Commodore 64 retrospective with some links and thoughts…

  • Vice Emulator: This is the relatively craptacular emulator I used to revisit the games of my youth. Once I figured it out, it wasn’t that bad, but the biggest issue with C64 emulators is that they all lack reasonable documentation (or the documentation is difficult to find). The biggest problem I had was with the Keyboard settings. You see, the C64’s keyboard had a different layout than today’s keyboards, so the mappings aren’t always intuitive. Also, the “Keyboard Settings” dialog needs some work (for one thing, someone needs to teach the interface designers how radio buttons are supposed to work). Oh, and by default, Vice assumes a German keyboard layout. That was a good one. Still, it worked well enough for my purposes.
  • C64.com: Fantastic site where I downloaded the majority of the games I played, but which also has lots of good C64 articles, including some long excerpts from The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore.
  • YouTube has a bunch of cheesy old C64 commercials. My favorite has a funny little jingle that goes something like “Are you keeping up with the Commodore, cause the Commodore is keeping up with you!” Ho man, that’s not creepy at all. And this one on Google Video is, well… it’s just sad.
  • Interestingly enough, I work in the old Commodore headquarters building. Go figure.

Well, that about does it for the Commodore 64. It was a system of firsts for me: my first real computer, my first programming experiences (BASIC!), and lots of firsts in terms of game styles too. And so I do have a bit of a soft spot for the C64. Next up in the video game retrospective will be the good ol NES. I won’t be starting that one right away, but I have a feeling that it will end up being a longer series of posts (too many great games for the NES). Until then…